David Andrews to enter Texas House race

Published 6:00 pm, Tuesday, December 1, 2009

The race for the District 85 seat in the Texas House of Representatives will gain another candidate next week when David Andrews officially throws his hat into the ring.

Andrews, who is from Noodle, about 20 miles northwest of Abilene, was in Plainview on Tuesday and plans to spend the week in the area meeting residents before returning to the Big Country to file for the seat currently held by Joe Heflin (D-Crosbyton).

Andrews said he will run as a Republican and characterized himself as a “Ronald Reagan conservative.”

He said he decided to run for the position after attending some town hall meetings hosted by Heflin and coming away with a sense that the Democrat wasn’t shooting straight with the audiences.

“He’s doing the same thing they’re doing in Washington,” he said, adding that politicians have a tendency to say one thing while doing something else.

“I don’t want what is going on in Washington spilling over into Austin,” he said.

Andrews is a native of Lubbock and attended Monterey High School before his family moved. The 54-year-old graduated in 1974 from Grant High School in Oklahoma City.

He went straight into the Air Force and earned the rank of senior master sergeant before retiring in 1994.

He then went to college at McMurry University in Abilene on the G.I. Bill, graduating in 2002 with a degree in accounting. Currently, he is working for a CPA firm in Abilene.

Andrews is married to his high school sweetheart, Sheryl, and the couple has a daughter, Kristie, who is a senior at Texas Tech, and a son, David Jr., who is a graduate student at Texas A&M.

Although he has never held political office, Andrews said he has been active in politics. He began serving as Jones County Republican Party chairperson in 2007, resigning that position so he could run for office.

Andrews said the issue that convinced him it was time to run involved the efforts to pass voter I.D. legislation in Austin. He explained that the bill passed the Senate but then sat in committee in the House for weeks before finally being voted to the floor. However, he added, the bill reached the floor in the waning hours of the legislative session and never had a chance to make it to a vote.

Andrews said Heflin was on the committee, and when asked why the bill was languishing Heflin told him that it was a bad bill.

“If that was such a bad bill, why didn’t he change it,” Andrews asked, pointing out that the bill left committee the same as it had been when it came over from the Senate.

“That upset me,” Andrews said. “I’m tired of that kind of politics.”

As it turned out, he continued, it wasn’t long before he discovered that he wasn’t alone.

He was the co-founder of the Big Country Tea Party movement and was stunned by the support that effort received. He said the effort attracted people of all races, ages and political affiliations who share his frustration.

“I was making signs next to a guy who was a Democrat,” he said. “We had the same message.”

And what was that message?

“I think people want true representation,” Andrews said. “Right now, constituents don’t want government to spend their money. They want government to get out of their way. They want government to do what government does best: protect the people, provide minimal services, let businesses be businesses.”